#sfpainter

I was had planned to pop-up in front of a plastic surgeon in Pacific Heights the following weekend. But Friday night, I had a better idea. I texted Anne, “Can I bring a large painting as a pop-up gallery to tomorrow’s Greenway party?” She loved the idea. Saturday morning, after laundry and other errands, I lift my Lilly painting out of the garage and carry her across the street over to the Visitacion Valley Greenway.

 Lilly is 7 feet tall and 5 feet wide. My daughter will point to her excitedly and yell, “Walking! It’s walking!” There are really only 3 elements in this painting: a translucent beige sea slug with short little legs that look like cow’s teats, a tangle of tan and brown limbs taken from men’s muscle magazines and men’s nudie (girl) magazines, and a crown of pastel-colored coral. This painting also has pale cerulean blended into the titanium the background and a muted lavender shadow cast by the figure.

 Sabrina and Carlos trail behind me to enjoy the festival. The entrance of the park is decorated and busy. Artists and volunteers carry equipment through the gate, performers linger and mingle and families waltz in with dogs and appetites to play. Like previous Greenway parties coordinated by Anne, today’s event is jovial, down-to-earth, artsy and a tad funky. It’s the perfect size: a few hundred attendees filter through over the course of 4 hours. And it’s the perfect pace: adequately planned, yet full of spontaneity.

 From the entrance follows a short corridor which opens up to a greenish slope encircled by a paved sidewalk. Directly to the right lies a small playground with swings and sandpit. Past the slope, the path continues through another corridor and finally through a brief maze of stairs and wheelchair accessible pathways set in a beautiful garden of native plants and trees. At the top are benches and another gate from which can be seen the next block of greenway across the street. The entire Greenway stretches 6 blocks, from Leland Avenue to McClaren Park. The party is contained in this one block.

 At the beginning corridor from Teddy are stationed a couple SF Sketchers, and a beautiful teal cart covered in paintings and open drawers. This busy corridor feels like an art gallery already, so I sit Lilly down under two trees onto the woodchips and tie her against the fence of the playground.

 The day unfolds like an art opening. I am too busy running into friends and acquaintances and igniting new relationships to take notes. I also meander away from the painting frequently to watch musicians play, to witness the doggie costume contest (hosted by 7 Mile’s owner Vanessa Garcia,) and to participate in making at other tables. My phone is broken so I am unable to take pictures. This one was taken by Cynthia, a preschool teacher at Paul Revere, whose teenage daughter I taught at Pacific Arts Camp many years ago.

 Lilly seems to feel at home in this environment. Cynthia says the figure in the painting looks as though it is moving. Cynthia used to be a dancer and she talks about a piece she choreographed and performed with her baby in her arms, performing the tumbling, caressing and babbling that is part of a mother-and-baby’s private daily interaction. She also whispers to me that the arm curling into a first on top with red creases looks phallic. I assure her that although the phallus was unintended, it contributes to the meaning of the painting. The limbs or tentacles have been taken from both men and women’s bodies. Painting a portrait of a woman’s experience must include masculine elements. The myth that women and their bodies are opposite to or an inversion of men’s bodies is false and instrumental to disempowerment. 

 I introduce myself to the artists of the teal cart, one of whom I happen to know. Book and Wheel is a project of Chispa, a collective of artists of Southeast San Francisco. I am quite surprised to meet them for the first time since living in the area since 2009. Kate and Oscar have built this beautiful cart called Book and Wheel to engage community members in more meaningful encounters with art, artists and nature. They are also responsible for some of the most beautiful murals around Portola. Today the cart is a gallery-studio-exchange. Participants are invited to draw ideas or pictures based on the “seed.” They deposit their drawings in a mail slot in exchange for a beautiful print of botanical watercolors by Anne or prints of sculptures, paintings and scratchboard drawings by Kate and Oscar. I sit under a tree across from Lilly to draw a seed exhuming billowy forms. A friend sits next to me and we catch up on life with toddlers. Carlos carries a wailing and wet Sabrina home for a nap.

 It’s nearly 3:00pm and time to close up. As I untie the rope, I meet an SF Sketcher from Fremont. He and his wife are originally from India. We talk about migration and diversity in Indian families. I talk about being inspired by Orientalism and trying to figure out what it means to be a painter who is Americanized, white and also South Asian too. He shows me some watercolor landscapes he started today. His style looks very Western, with an emphasis on naturalistic light with only selective details fully defined. I start to wonder what he thought about my comment. He says the figure in my painting looks like it’s dancing, and asks me if I intended it to be abstract.

 I have wondered about how my painting practice can be a place to explore my muddled ancestry for some time, but I honestly feel lost still. Orientalism parallels the tradition of Western figure painting. Both are an expression of colonization (of peoples of color, of women’s bodies) and in the Neo-Classical era most artists worked in both genres. As a mixed woman painter, I represent both the colonizer and the colonized. Having grown up in America it can be difficult to know where to begin inventing an authentic practice that explores this strange weaving of cultures, oppression, resistance, genetics, family. But I know I have no choice; I must ask this question because of my position. I am old enough to understand the recent past. But in flesh I am new. I am undoubtedly privileged. But to indulge blindly in that would dishonor my ancestry and disrespect my grandfather. “Yoooo are PunJABI!!!” my wide-eyed grandfather would announce with a fist blown loudly down.